jeudi 26 novembre 2009

If I were a drag queen, my drag queen name would be Xaviera Gold. It's just a ridiculously excellent name.

And this happens to be an outstanding title. The Ken Lou mix starts off as a fairly standard garage affair, but it is extremely well constructed and produced, and I love the hint of India on the backing vocals. It's not too hard to find on CD as it was on the Kinky Trax 2 compilation, and also Declaration of Independents that was recently featured on fairly new blog Only 320. A good percentage of stuff there is interesting, and the rips are high quality, so how can you complain?

However, it's a little more difficult to find the Mood II Swing dub from the b-side in decent quality. It's a saucy affair with Xaviera telling us that she wants a "long big dick" and that if you don't have a yacht in your jeans, you needn't bother her. Hot!

I ripped this years back and just found it again, so decided to declick and re-encode it. Quality is pretty good! And it's a classic! Have a listen...

I'm now re-listening to both mixes with a great deal of pleasure. Thanks MAW and thanks Xaviera. Gold indeed.

By the way, there's a 3rd mix on the 12" (edited by Frankie Knuckes apparently), but it doesn't really stand out, and another - rarer - mostly instrumental dub on 12" (that I found on YouTube but can't find again right now).

It would be great to see the track officially re-released. Alas, I imagine that it's stuck in major label limbo (as it originally came out through BMG).

dimanche 22 novembre 2009

If you're a remixer, and you're remixing a major artists for a major label, here's a word of advice: don't remove the entire chorus and the part where they sing the name of the song.

Inspired fools Slow Supreme did just that when they proposed two mixes of Boogie Wonderland for a Japan-only remix album in 2002, and guess what? The one that completely omitted the title and obliterated the tune didn't get picked for the CD. In fact, I thought it had never been released, but it did in fact make it onto a 12" sampler. As far as I know, a CD rip has never been available before.

A shame really, because it's a pretty accomplished 2-step mix, much in the style of MJ Cole, and pretty catchy despite being a radical rework.

mercredi 11 novembre 2009

Back in 1997 I was working in the dysfunctional Black Market shop in Paris and the buzz around the release of Nuyorican Soul was immense. A frenzy. The Paris crowd worshipped Masters At Work, had in-depth knowledge of disco, jazz and latin influences (Spain is, er, not far) and the Nuyorican Soul album had them all in qualitative spades.

Add to that some killer remixes of the album's singles - including a couple from Armand Van Helden at the top of his game - and the album was absolutely essential.

Strangely enough, in a market dominated by reissues and 'platinum versions' the tenth anniversary of the release went by without any sort of celebration. Surely there's a market for a special 2CD edition with extra mixes? For a start, I'd love to find a digital copy of I Love The Nightlife that they did for the soundtrack of Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco. After all, despite being on Sony (whereas the Nuyorican album was through Universal) it was out around the same time, and has never been released on CD.

Anyway, I'd made my own long version of the album a while back, but in low quality mp3, so I decided to start over in high-quality. The tracks were all sequenced together already, but I've replaced the short versions of the singles with their extended or remixed versions and tacked another remix on the end, making the whole thing 30 minutes longer (1h44min!). I like to think of it as an extended listening session for real fans of the album.

As a bonus I've done a new extension of Runaway too. At the time, the Armand Van Helden mix was getting all the attention, and only one of the Mousse T. mixes was on the CD-single in Europe. I've taken the two that were on the US CD-single and melded them into a 14-minute piece by extending the end of one and fading it into the next. Works pretty well!

mercredi 28 octobre 2009

Another example of how the mighty have fallen, Todd Edwards blazed incredibly bright in the early nineties, more or less invented speed garage by accident, milked it as long as he could and continued making the same music way after all his inspiration had left him.

Instead of cleverly cutting, pasting and tone-shifting micro-samples, he started lazily filling in any obvious holes with vocodered lines sung by himself (and he doesn't have a great voice). Increasingly embarrassing and incongruous references to God and Jesus were shoehorned into his remixes. The beats got faster and faster, a sure sign that the melodies were getting weaker and weaker. Frankly, he hasn't done a decent remix in the last eight years.

And yet, back in the early nineties, no-one could touch him. What seemed like a formula - dry beats, chopped up vocal samples, that break - was endlessly inventive, surprising, inspiring.

When Dimitri From Paris' Sacrebleu album was re-released in the U.S. through Atlantic, they commissioned new American mixes of a few tracks to whip up some interest. Une Very Stylish Fille was picked up by Volvo for an ad campaign and remixed by both Kenny Dope and Steinski. Sacré Français got new mixes from Davidson Ospina and Todd Edwards, and the latter were absolutely top notch.

Unfortunately, the Todd Edwards Re-Dub version on the CD was mixed in with the previous track (because of its long intro?) and the alternative Re-Create Mix was never released on CD. Indeed, the entire album is now no longer available, almost certainly because of problems with uncleared samples.

Happily, I recently across an old CD-R of mine from many years back (when I had access to a Technics and proper amplifier) packed full of classic Todd Edwards remixes!

Below you'll find the link to the two Dimitri remixes. Firstly, I've reconstructed the Re-Dub version to remove the mixed intro that was on the CD. This involved re-creating the rhythm beat by beat, high hat by high hat. During the process I also came across a click in one of the samples that was almost certainly left in purposefully, but I found very distracting, so I've removed it throughout the track. As for the vinyl-only mix, I've de-clicked it and it sounds pretty damn good. Have a listen!

dimanche 18 octobre 2009

Black Men United was a 'supergroup' made up of R. Kelly, Boyz II Men, Tony Toni Tone, Tevin Campbell, Usher and more (including Lenny Kravitz on guitar!), apparently formed just for this track, in order to promote the film Jason's Lyric.

Jason's Lyric, "a modern day Romeo & Juliet from the makers of New Jack City" was clearly aimed at he black demographic - both thematically and musically - and allegedly nearly got an X rating for a racy sex scene (that was removed). IMDB gives a quote from the film that does not inspire confidence:

Jason Alexander: I've never flown in a plane before.Lyric: Sometimes you don't need a plane to fly.

And talking about music, the B.M.U. track U Will Know came with sterling remixes from C.J. Mackintosh, including two house mixes that were very cleverly constructed, skilfully layering element on element.

It occurred to me that it would be possible to put the two of them together, so I extended the intro a little and made one mix flow into the other, giving the track five minutes to build up before the vocal parts come in. Even at nearly 12 minutes long, you never get bored. A testament to a well-made remix. Have a listen...

This really reminds of the time when Mackintosh was dishing out what he called FXTC dubs with generally superlative results (Sounds of Blackness, for example), and I never tire of listening to the track, 15 years later.

mercredi 7 octobre 2009

I won't go on about how terrible, irredeemably awful her current product is (I wouldn't even call it music any more) but suffice to say that some people should - at some point - realise that they've said all they had to say, don't need any more money, and just retire.

Unfortunately, this increasingly-crusty old bag is still going strong. I prefer to ignore the adoptions, divorces and facelifts and focus myself on 1992 and this amazing release. The Masters At Work mix of Erotica was a thing of beauty, deceptively simple (based on three repeating chords) that added element upon element, building higher and higher... and then stopping abruptly. I always thought that the main MAW mix was way too short. Luckily, I recently came across the vinyl dubs on someone's blog (no idea where now) and thought it was time to give this version the length it deserves.

The House Instrumental is indeed the perfect counterpart to the Underground Club mix, with plenty of FX and dubbiness to keep the interest going. Put together, they give a 9'25" version that is - to me - much more satisfying, (dare I say it) length-wise. Brings back memories indeed.

jeudi 1 octobre 2009

It's funny how time can change things. I used to love Ultra Naté, then she did Free, had a huge hit worldwide and - in my opinion - ruined Strictly Rhythm forever, if not house music in general. After Free, every label started scrambling to make the catchiest, most commercial house tune possible. Things were never the same.

I bought this CD-single on import when it came out, and it reminds me of the good old days of scouring HMV for U.S. maxi-CDs with loads of mixes on them. This one had over an hour of music on it, with barely anything to throw away. The downtempo mixes are cool, the Fire Island mix went on to be the basis of Ultraflava (hence the name), and with names such as Basement Boys, Nellee Hooper and Mood II Swing how could it not be a classic?

It was the last three mixes on the CD, collaborations between Mood II Swing and Little Louie Vega that really piqued my interest though. A mixture of dubby and druggy, they worked the vocal elements and transformed the song into a Factory Bar classic. Epic, inspired stuff. I had a bit of fun putting those three mixes together into one long mix (23'14"!) and although it's not perfect (it was one of my first ever efforts) it's still pretty tasty. Things were complicated by one of the mixes not being at the same tempo as the others. Anyway, have a quick listen if you like...

When my bag was stolen from a train years ago, this CD was in it. I was so relieved to find a copy again a little later, and if you can, you should too. It's pretty scarce now ($30 on eBay!).

jeudi 17 septembre 2009

Although I initially found this through the extremely respectable (but currently slightly dormant) Finest Def Mix blog, there were a thousand reasons to not like it:

1. Group name with deliberate spelling mistake, 'cos dey from da streets.2. And it's gibberish (anybody care to explain?).3. Obvious major label product with token black person to maximise sales over a wide demographic.4. Shameless use of the word "sex" in their major (only?) hit.5. This particular track took the UK charts by storm, shooting up as high as number 58.6. Terrible lyrics, including the gem:

"I’ve got my eye on you / And I know just what you are / You’re just a user, girl / And you drive me like a car".

WTF?

Indeed, the Uncyclopedia article dedicated to the group (recommended) says "Color Me Badd was an R&B quartet that wrote songs during the early '90s, widely considered the low water mark of R&B. And Color Me Badd are the reason why."

And yet, even though the group's blatant intellectual bankruptcy earned them general ridicule and a thankfully rapid career nosedive, this particular track actually has quite a bit going for it:

1. A slew of remixes by Frankie Knuckles in his prime.2. Stolen sample from the Bar-Kays (to distract your attention from a weedy rap).3. An 'instrumental' version that actually has loads of great piano improv.4. And most of all a surprisingly sweet groove. No wonder it didn't sell.

So, I took the vocal version and added the instrumental to the end to make a rather sweet version that lasts nearly 11 minutes. Not rocket science for sure, but a pleasant listen nonetheless. Check it out here...

Anyway, I liked the track so much, I bought a copy on the web so I could get a high-quality rip. Thankfully, once I tidy it away in my collection, I won't have to look at those pug ugly posers ever again!

jeudi 10 septembre 2009

I think Mo' Money was probably a terrible film. Lord know how they managed to get so much great music on there: Caron Wheeler (with great remixes by Tenaglia), Sounds of Blackness (with remixes by Morales) and this, the motherlode, one of the greatest garage tracks ever and one of my most favourite memories of being on a dancefloor during the nineties.

Bot the vocal and dub versions were amazing, inventive, joyous, hypnotic. It's garage as it was meant to be: uplifting, ridiculously uplifting even, a masterpiece.

Can't say I liked the later remixes from 1996 - despite coming from Sanchez and MK - so I went back to the source: from the US CD-single, I used two of the classic CJ Mackintosh mixes and one Morales mix, moving from the dub, to the vocal and back to a dub, making one long epic that lasts - unbelievably - nearly 25 minutes! It's a mix that dares to take its time (there isn't even a beat until 1'30") and it's consistently interesting and different.

Check it out here...

This is one of the first edits I ever tried, I still love it, and I've just re-done it in better quality for you to enjoy! The mix sounds deceptively simple, but there was a fair bit of tweaking involved, and my favourite bit is around the 16-minute mark (in case you're wondering).

dimanche 6 septembre 2009

I only very vaguely registered Eighth Wonder at the end of the eighties for this - their only decent hit, penned by the then blazing Pet Shop Boys, before they went utterly rancid.

What I only just found out however is that the track was remixed for the American market by a certain... Little Louie Vega, pre-Masters At Work and still very much in Freestyle mode. I knew that Vega had been very active on the New York freestyle scene, and yet it has only just struck me that freestyle's position as part way between house and hip hop was the perfect preparation for the Kenlou mixes that were to follow a few years later, with both club and jeep beats handled with precision and intelligence.

Although a shortened version of Vega's main mix of I'm Not Scared was released on CD, the full mix (and dub) were only available on 12" promo. I'm not really up for paying a lot to find a copy, but I did manage to find half-decent rips of both mixes that allowed me to whip up a quick fusion. And here it is.

And if anyone has a good rip of the full, 7'17" vocal mix, I'd love to have it.

mercredi 2 septembre 2009

I missed this one the first time round, then came across it on a blog and really liked the sultry feel of the Shep Pettibone mixes. For some reason, Shep doesn't seem to be getting us much blog love as he should, despite having played a pivotal role in disco and then house. Some of his remixes are legendary and I reckon it's only a matter of time before his classic stuff gets remembered (a compilation would be a good start).

Anyway, the versions I had downloaded weren't very good quality, so I snapped up the CD-single second hand on the web and cut up two of the mixes to make my own version. It now runs for over 10 minutes with a long dubby beginning that finally runs smoothly into the vocal version. The production is excellent and I never tire of listening to it. That woman has an amazing voice and the groove is irresistible.

Have a listen here:

There's a discography of all of Shep's remixes on his site, a great resource if you're trying to catch up on some of the harder to find stuff. For info, Shep turned fifty a month ago and now owns the Empress Hotel, which Wikipedia says "is very popular among gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender travellers in New Jersey". Gosh!

samedi 22 août 2009

Since I got hold of this from the finestdefmix blog I've been in love with it. Lush strings, great piano from Terry Burrus, that unmistakeable voice. I did my own fusion of it almost immediately, but the sound quality wasn't great (low bitrate) and I knew it deserved better.

After a few technical problems, I managed to wangle some .wav rips (I would have bought the CD myself but it costs a whopping 30 euros on Discogs!) but never got round to re-doing the mix. Finally, my short holidays this summer allowed me to go back to it and get everything in order.

Using three different Morales mixes I came up with a version that lasts nearly 15 minutes, with quite a bit of diversity in the structure so you never get bored. I also corrected a dodgy edit near the beginning of the main mix (if I can do it, why didn't they?).

Have a listen to my version if you like. I'm pleased with it, and still love the song...

vendredi 7 août 2009

Give It To You and Carry On. I thought I'd heard these tracks soooo many times that it would be impossible for me to get any more pleasure out of them. I pretty much played the US CD-singles to death back in the day, and yet it's been a while... so I dug them out again, and hearing them anew was actually pretty darn great.

With mixes by Masters At Work, Kerri Chandler, Maurice Joshua, Todd Terry and David Morales perhaps that's no surprise.

My Fist fusions aren't brain surgery, but the first for Carry On does allow you to listen to the Masters At Work mix and dub in one long stretch lasting 11'23". The crossover point is pretty flagrant because the two mixes are radically different, but I think it works.

The fusion of two David Morales mixes of Give It To You is much more satisfactory/successful, clocking in at 12'12".

I always wondered where the CD cover art for this one came from, and now I know: there was actually a video for this version, very obviously pitched at the 'club' (i.e. gay) crowd, with numerous muscled men in white underwear venerating an almost-static Martha Wash. You can read my snide comments over the video below, but the quality's not that good, so you may want to check out a better-quality version here too.

It's really quite hilarious, chock-a-block with clichés and gives a whole new meaning to the lyrics "I'm gonna give it to you".

mercredi 29 juillet 2009

I thought my days of expensively buying CD singles were over. Apparently not, although this one wasn't too dear: it's the post & packaging that really kick you in the teeeth.

Deskee was a house/rap act from the eighties that included rapper Crumpley (what a name!) and Klaus Jankuhn (aka Westbam). Very obviously a commercial venture - that was to fizzle out very quickly as it happens - they did score a couple of large hits including Dance, Dance (with 'bootleg' mixes by Tony Humphries that are pretty scarce) and their most memorable tune, Let There Be House.

Remixes were commissioned for the UK in 1989 (love the way that the sleeve states "The 90s edition" as if it were something really exciting) from then hot remixing duo Dave Dorrell and CJ Mackintosh. The result was a really good long mix (11'30"!) and a couple of dubs, all of which only came out on 12 inch... apart from a mini 3" CD in Austria. I heard a poor quality vinyl rip of the mix somewhere on the web and decided that I had to order the CD. Difficult to believe that it's 20 years old already...

Ripping mini CDs is tough if you've only got a slot-drive computer, but I managed to find a way round that, and so here it is in 256kbps AAC, and slightly extended too by adding a bit of one of the dubs to the main mix! Have a listen if you like...

Click 'download' to get
Deskee - Let There Be House
(A 2 Zen mix part I & II Fist extension) (24MB)
or click here to go to the Let There Be House folder and choose the version you want.

dimanche 19 juillet 2009

I'm not in the habit of reposting content from other blogs but I stumbled upon Dance Remix Fix the other day (thanks to the great Marshall Jefferson remixes of "I Don't Even Know If I Should Call You Baby" by Soul Family Sensation) and the site hasn't been updated since 5th December 2008, so...

Looking through the archives, there's some interesting stuff on there, some of which is hard to find. For example, some DMC remixes that I didn't even know existed.

I never really understood how DMC worked. Getting big names to remix big tracks and not releasing the results to the public seems a little strange (not to say a large waste of money). It's certainly frustrating for those of us who love the music. So it was with a certain satisfaction that I was able to download the following tracks, ripped from CD in decent quality. Click on the names to download:Frankie Knuckles feat. Adeva "Welcome To The Real World (Johnny Vicious remix)" is a stomping, slightly barmy affair that will not be to everyone's taste. It's certainly pretty far removed from the original and very typical of Johnny Vicious' style of that time.

You can still find some of classic DMC mixes from the era to buy on the DMCworld site, but I'd never heard these ones before. Apparently these came from a CD called DMC - The Best of U.S. remixes Vol.1" (tracklisting here) but I have no idea how to buy it...

dimanche 5 juillet 2009

Well, not really the vaults; my CD-R binder. I must have loved these tracks a lot back in the day, as I've never really ripped much to CD. Back then I had access to a proper turntable, so they sound pretty good. I've also de-clicked them and adjusted the EQ to make them some pristine.

Andrez Mendez "Bring Me Love (Mad Boy mix)" - 1996This is a Mark Picchiotti remix and although his boat has definitively sailed for me, and most people would probably consider the Frankie Knuckles mix as the definitive mix, this version is a very different take that has its merits. Dark and hypnotic, I think it's a pretty great effort. If only I could get my hands on the (very rare) CD...

mardi 30 juin 2009

"U" was not Loni Clark's biggest hit, especially as she did actually have a couple of bona fide garage hits in the UK and US, i.e. Rushing and Love's Got Me (On A Trip So High).

A Mood II Swing protégé, their great production, her great voice and the great early nineties all conspired to give her a couple of classic tunes... and a couple only: by 1996 her career (or garage career at least) took a serious and seemingly definitive nosedive.

"U" did get a UK release with added K-Klass remixes, but for me nothing can touch the completely demented Johnny Vicious remixes. Released on the Nervous sister label Sorted (specialised in druggy tracks, as the label clearly indicates) Johnny was at the top of his game at this time. His Slinky vocal remix is completely off the wall, with trademark stabs and discordant arrangement giving the whole thing a very weird and entrancing feel. However it's the Play-Doe dub that was the killer track for me: completely nuts, with a slow-it-down-speed-it-up-again part that used to devastate dancefloors at the time. Classic stuff.

I met Johnny in Paris around the time of the track, and was in touch with him until recently about "U" which he was hoping to find the time to hook out of his computer. That was a year ago, but I suppose he's a busy guy. I also asked Nervous if they were intending on releasing the track digitally. Kevin Williams from "marketing/A&R/promotions" said that he'd look into it, and that I should "keep a look out".

That was in February 2006, so I'm not holding my breath for a legal download any time soon.

What I've posted is a quality vinyl rip, de-clicked, EQ'd and boosted to get it sounding crisp. The original vinyl is pretty easy to find (here), but no-one seems to have a decent digital copy. Until Johnny finds time to go through his DAT archives or Nervous get their back catalogue online - finally - this should tide you over.

lundi 29 juin 2009

Michael Jackson had long been in that category of best-work-behind-them for me (Madonna's in there too). He made some tracks that redefined music, then he did a lot of crap, was miserable and went mad. Soon, (if he's not plastinated) he'll look like one of the dancers in his Thriller video.

Of course we have him to thanks for many classic tracks and remixes. My favourite was probably the OOFT Music Phazed edit of Thriller, as it stays pretty faithful to the original, removing most of the vocals and relentlessly working that funky hook. It's subtle and clever at the same time, and I even bought the CD after hearing it on a blog a couple of years back. However, the OOFT version does keep in a few elements from the video (i.e. a long break) that I wasn't really keen on, so I did my own version with the break removed (plus an extra quick bit of filter), and here it is.

jeudi 25 juin 2009

I never thought of myself as a Mariah Carey fan. In fact, I always thought of Mariah Carey fans as a bit naff. She's so obviously a product that surely a music fan with taste couldn't take her seriously, right?

Well, the above notwithstanding, she did have some cracking songs (although this is no longer the case as far as I can tell), and her relationship with Clivilles & Cole and especially David Morals have harvested some classic tracks. So let's say I'm a fan of some Mariah Carey remixes, and not really mad about the busty train wreck that she's become.

There are whole blogs devoted to MC and this is not one of them, but I came across this track somewhere and - dammit - fell in love. The CD-single of the C&C remixes is very hard to find now, and I had to splurge a bit to get my hands on one. After 2 months, a missed recorded delivery and some to-ing and fro-ing to Germany and back, I finally have it and really wanted to put the vocal and the dub together.

It wasn't especially difficult, although the mastering is very different on the two mixes and I had to juggle with the volume to make one flow into the next seamlessly. I was also able to correct a master error where there was a slight flutter on one channel at one point.

The production on these tracks - as with most C&C remixes - is amazing, especially on the rhythmic elements. My fusion is 13'25" long and hopefully makes it even more enjoyable to listen to.

vendredi 19 juin 2009

It's hard to fault the Masters At Work productions of the early nineties. The boys had loads of ideas, great technical skills and a feel for the dancefloor that just blew everyone else out of the water.

Even more surprising was their versatility, being able to handle dubs, vocals, jazz influences, jeep beats... all this through their experience as DJs and heritage as latino Americans.

The collaborations with Tito Puente were also remarkable for radical reworks that made the tracks unrecognisable whilst still keeping their trademark hooks. Personally, I would love to find Para Los Rumberos on CD (only the Puente's Vibe mix was on the first of their BBE compilations), but in the meantime I find it hard to believe that Ran Kan Kan has been overlooked on the blogs.

This of one the first tracks by MAW that I really loved, and it seems that no-one has posted the CD-single yet, although a vinyl rip was available on the Masters at Work Forever blog, now - ironically - dormant (and much missed).

So for those who like their vintage MAW in pristine quality, click here for the five mixes of Ran Kan Kan, including the absolutely storming original! (46MB .rar file).

mercredi 17 juin 2009

Listening to the two Morales mixes, it was obvious that one would easily be melded into the next with a little jiggery-pokery, so I tacked the Erotica mix onto the Def Classic mix, cut out some of the vocals that were repeated in the second half, and it came out really well.

With a long mix (13'22" here!), it's important not to get bored, but here there's always something new, and it's well dosed: a bit of vocals, a bit of the dub, a bit of piano. You have to marvel at the skill of David Morales - the dub is basically built round just three piano notes. Very clever stuff.

UPDATE - Finally got round to buying this for myself. Now in higher quality, and hosted on Soundcloud, but no download: the Morales mix is available to buy on the usual sites, although strangely the Erotica mix isn't. Send me your proof of purchase and I'll send you my fusion. How about that? Otherwise, you can listen below.

lundi 8 juin 2009

I suspect that the release of Titiyo's album "This Is" in the 'States in 1993 was partly due to the success of her previous one, and partly because she just happens to be Neneh Cherry's baby sister.

With such a sniggersome artist name and unfortunate double-entendre single title, it's no wonder that Back & Forth didn't really make its mark in England, however it did include a couple of remixes from young upstarts Masters At Work (as did the follow-up single Tell Me I'm Not Dreaming). Both were undiscovered classics for me until a few years ago. Both show MAW at their inventive best at the beginning of the nineties (yes, again).

In Back & Forth's case, the vocal mix sounded very different from the the dub - which is basically an instrumental excursion with added sax solo - but I had the feeling that the beats at the end of the one would meld well into the instrumental beginning of the other, and I think I was right! With a little extra tweaking and sampling, they came together to make one brilliant 11-minute whole, and I especially like the surprising change of mood between the two (surprising because it seems to flow quite naturally). Have a listen if you like...

samedi 30 mai 2009

12 years ago! That's mad. At the time, Basement Jaxx were producing consistently complex and danceable tracks and were honorary members of the US Mongoloid crowd dominated by Nitebreed, Van Helden, Sanchez and Sneak. It wasn't a huge surprise then when Sanchez remixed this track by the wonderful Corrina Joseph.

The original contained the baseline and vocal sample that were later to become the huge hit Flylife, but the Sanchez mixes ditched most of the original elements and brought in a hypnotic latino riff that relentlessly turner and turned and reeled you in. However, the vocal mix ended rather abruptly and I thought it would be good to link the vocal with the dub, so that's what I did!

The result is 13'39" long, which will drive you mad if you don't like the song, or wild if you do!

Have a listen here.

You can download my Corrina Joseph - Live Your Life With Me (Narcotic Vocal mix/dub Fist fusion) here(19MB)
The Atlantic Jaxx catalogue is now available for legal download on sites such as Juno, so I've disabled the download of this edit.

samedi 23 mai 2009

About a month ago, when I was writing my post about Zami Girl, I had a look on Discogs to see what else the ä Records label had released. That led me to Saundra Williams and my interest was piqued. I found a scatchy vinyl rip of the track on a blog, but the MK mixes - that I'd never heard of before - were pretty damn good, so I ordered the CD through Amazon. The CD finally came through today, apparently haing taken its merry time by travelling via New Zealand. Very odd.

Saundra Williams was active in the early nineties, although she's still ticking along today. Her website is clunky, has butterflies buzzing round it, an excruciating bio and - best of all - a welcome song that launches with the homepage, with Saundra herself singing a special sultry R&B number, "Welcome to Saundra Williams dot com". Fabulous.

Although her site says once you've heard her you'll never forget her, I Want It, I Need It (Real Love) has not found its place in the garage hall of fame. Perhaps the catchy name had something to do with it? It sounds much like a Robin S copy, but the song isn't half bad, and the MK mixes have aged rather well.

I decided to take the MK vocal and dub and put them together, to form one 13-minute whole. The two mixes were not at the same BPM, which is unusual, so the dub is basically pinned onto the end of the vocal. Not rocket science for sure, but nice stuff all the same.

dimanche 10 mai 2009

Found this - or rather came across this again - on the ever-wonderful Finest Def Mix blog. Back in the days I only really ever knew the amazing, sulty Carl Craig mix that was on the Late Night Sessions II by X-Press 2, still an amazing compilation.

Finest Def Mix is wonderful, but their posts are in mp3 format at only 192kbps, which has a nasty effect on sound quality. I loved the two Morales mixes on this CD so much that I went and bought the CD-single so I could do my own Fist fusion.

Using the beginning of the instrumental, I then mix into the vocal version and add an extra but of piano at the end, resulting in a mix that lasts over eleven and a half minutes. I'm really pretty pleased with it and it's my favourite track of the moment! Can't believe it's 13 years old...

mercredi 29 avril 2009

Yaki-Da was a girl group dreamed up by Ace of Base member and producer Jonas "Joker" Berggren. And they were awful. I mean, what does Yaki-Da mean already? What is that squiggle logo after their name and why does it feature so heavily in their videos if no-one can understand it? Did a blind person design that cover? We will never know. All the signs indicated that, after the cod-reggae codswallop of Ace of Base, Yaki-Da were destined to be pants.

However, as time has proved over and over again, crap music sells. Often, the crappier it is the more people like it (see Ace of Base). And thus Yaki-Da were thrust upon America with their début single "I Saw You Dancing", the audio equivalent of retsina-smelling vomit, accompanied by a dire video and terrible lyrics such as "Just look into my eyes / And I'll take you to paradise" or "Say Yaki-Da my love". Frankly, if my love said Yaki-Da I'd take him for a brain scan.

Here's the original video so you can see and hear for yourself. Perhaps it had Mediterranean camp sites slow-dancing all summer, but I doubt that many wiggled to it outside of Sweden.

Terrible, and definitely not club fodder, so Polygram decided to have it remixed by wunderkind of the time Armand Van Helden. And the incredible happened. He managed to turn it into something of pounding, glistening beauty. Ditching everything - thank God - except the 'I' of the title (because otherwise the label would have had a fit) and the line "I'll never be the same again" (quite true in this case), it's still my favourite ever Armand Van Helden remix, and I was lucky enough to be able to tell him so when interpreting for him in Paris years ago. He was already very slick and sure of himself back then, and although I don't like his recent material at all, this still gives me shivers down my spine when I listen to it (and brings back memories of amazing nights out).

I Saw You Dancing reached 54 on the Billboard hot 100, a fittingly lukewarm performance. The group released a few more singles, even a second album. Shite. All of it. But at least they gave us the greatest Armand remix of all time, and for that I am eternally grateful.

dimanche 26 avril 2009

For years I though this track was by Zami Girl. Zami Girl is actually the title. Poor Adele Bertei didn't even get a credit on the cover. But then this is quite a strange track...

Bertei (I have now learned) had a moderately successful career in the 80s as a sort of Madonna copy, recording with Jellybean (even appearing on Top of the Pops here) and having a bit part in Desperately Seeking Susan! Other bubblegum efforts were released with help from Thomas Dolby and Scritti Politti (here).

But Adele had a darker, more political side and in 1994 this expressed itself through Zami Girl. With its delightful refrain of "Ballbreaker. Dyke. Bitch", E-Zee Posse-style raggamuffin delivery and lyrics exhorting lesbians everywhere to reappropriate the insults hurled at them, it's hard to believe that anyone thought it would be a hit. However, it was produced by the same team as RuPaul's Supermodel, which probably explains how the track came to receive pretty damn fine remixes from Johnny Vicious - at the top of his game - and Junior Vasquez.

This was a time when BPMs were nearer 118 than 130 and although the track has been mostly forgotten (the CD isn't even on Discogs), stumbling across it again was a pleasure. Still not convinced by that mock-Jamaican accent though...

mardi 21 avril 2009

I always thought that Pia Zadora was Italian. In fact she was born to Italina/Polish parents in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1954. After a rather up and down acting career (i.e. she wasn't very good) she moved on singing, where she was more readily accepted, by the masses at least.

She was 35 in 1989 when even the singing career seemed to be faltering. Heartbeat of Love was one of her last singles (check out"Dance Out of my Head" here too, it's rather good) and she's all but disappeared for the last decade. In 2000 she looked like this, so perhaps staying hidden for a while would be a good idea?

Before disappearing, she did give us Heartbeat of Love, a distinctly average song that some bright spark at CBS thought should be remixed by Clivilles & Cole, and frankly why not? If anyone could shine this turd, they could. Their Freestyle mix is 'heavily inspired' by Yellow Magic Orchestra, and the house mix pinches bits of Lil' Louis' French Kiss, a huge hit that year. Using cheeky hooks from elsewhere was a C&C strong point.

The result isn't half bad, although Pia's weedy vocals are extremely evident at times. It is however fairly rare on CD (one copy here on amazon.com and strangely a couple here on amazon.fr if you're interested.)

So, a curiosity rather than a classic, but surely anything by Clivilles & Cole is worth a listen?

lundi 20 avril 2009

It is sometimes sobering to look at the dates on some of your favourite releases. 1992 was 17 years ago for Christ's sake! That's like listening to the Charleston when everyone else has moved onto rock 'n' roll. Anyways...

Back in the days when Madchester was raving and all indie bands were being remixed, Andy Weatherall was riding high. His remixes for One Dove were hot and I especially remember stories of how his Sabres of Paradise takes of Espiritu's "Conquistador" were changing hands for £100 (whether that was true or not, you can now get them for 99 pence). Silliness.

Flowered Up were a Happy Mondays-a-like, but Weekender was an epic track with a memorable short film for the video, and Weatherall's 'Audrey Is A Little Bit More Partial' mix now sounds much like an epic garage track; it's nearly 17 minutes long and has a great change in tempo in the middle, just like some of Johnny Vicious' best mixes. I'm a sucker for a long mix, and a tempo change, so rediscovering this was a pleasure.

If you fancy a bit of house-not-house, garage-not-garage, disco-not-disco, call-it-what-you-will-but-I-think-it-was-pretty-groundbreaking-then-and-still-amazing-now, you can download Flowered Up "Weatheral's Weekender (Audrey Is A Little Bit More Partial) here (31MB).

dimanche 19 avril 2009

Sorry, I couldn't resist this ridiculous photo, found whilst trawling through Google Images

When doing the Mariah Carey edit below I realised that a previous edit for her song Fantasy done last November could have been better quality. At the time I had gleaned the necessary mixes from a couple of different blogs and they were not encoded with a great bitrate.

A quick shout out for help on this page got me the top-quality mixes I needed very quickly from those nice folks at the Nineties Club CD Maxi Singles blog. Excellent! I immediately got to work recreating my edit...

You can read the original post all about it here. The download link there has been updated, but if you don't want to read the story behind it you can download my 20-minute mix of the Def Drums, Def Club and Sweet Dub mixes here (46MB).

I love this classic track (almost fifteen years old already!), and I'm pretty pleased with the re-edit. I'd also like to know the story behind that ridiculous photo (UPDATE: it's here).

vendredi 17 avril 2009

Ah, 1994! That was the year. Heaps of classic garage tracks, plus Johnny Vicious and Armand Van Helden at their prime. Delicious.

This tracks was one of the first fusions I ever did, using no less than four mixes and lasting nearly 22 minutes. I like the way the mixes all had their own personality and yet flowed into each other well. Some purists might not appreciate Armand's stomping bit at the end, but I loved it then and I love it now. Reminds me of my sole visit to the Factory Bar in New York... (*sigh*)

jeudi 16 avril 2009

I have to admit to giving up on Mariah Carey sometime in the nineties. Her syrupy love songs got on my nerves, her being signed for a huge amount then dumped by one major company, and consequently being signed again by another left me cold. Rumours about her depression and diva tantrums bored me.

Looking back, it wasn't all bad though. In particular, her partnership with David Morales was often inspired. I've lost track of how many songs they worked together on and whilst Fantasy was one of my top favourites (my re-edit is here) together with Dreamlover, I hadn't actually heard Butterfly Reprise before today. Thanks to the great Finest Def Mix blog for that.

Morales often had Carey re-sing the vocals of her downtempo stuff in order to remix it at a house tempo. Butterfly Reprise was so far from the original 'Butterfly' that it was even given a slightly different name and it sounds very much like Mariah in the studio improvising over a loop for 30 minutes. There's not much to the 'song', but it's one of those dreamy grooves that - if you get into it - just can't last long enough. Some will say that the chord structure bears more than a passing resemblance to "Stay This Way" by the Brand New Heavies (that you can get here). Others might remark that the song is basically rhyming 'fly' with 'fly' throughout. Whatever. It's kinda sweet.

For my Fist fusion I combined the main house mix with part of the Def 'B' Fly mix and the original, giving a version that lasts over 16 minutes. I also repaired a dodgy edit that had been made at around 3'35" (perhaps at the mastering stage to shorten the song a bit?) and left a slight audible hole.

mercredi 15 avril 2009

I don't think there's any point posting music if it's not at decent quality. 192 kbps mp3 files sound OK when listening on your computer, but for home listening the sound isn't great. Part of the idea behind this blog is rediscovering lost music, so for me quality is important.

Firstly - and a lot of people neglect this stage - I take care with the rip. I use a wonderful program called Max by Stephen Booth that can rip and convert in about 20 different file formats. More importantly, it uses cdparanoia error correction, which guarantees a bit-correct rip of the data (audio) on the CD without any analogue transfer (via a soundcard for example) giving an absolutely perfect cop of all the audio information (no skips, etc.). Max is also great for ripping old or damaged CDs as it is able - in most cases, and for a lot of 'lost causes' - to keep chugging away at scratched or oxidised data and finally get them ripped. It has come through for me in the face of ancient CDs more than a couple of times.

By the way, Stephen also has a CD Ripper called, er, Rip currently in private beta, and I'm interested to see what it will be like...

Secondly, file quality is very important. Whenever I pay for downloads on (my personal favourtie) junodownload, I always get them in FLAC format. FLAC is an open-source compressed file format, but unlike mp3 or even m4a it is lossless, meaning that even with a smaller file size there is zero reduction in quality. FLAC will never be as small as mp3 or m4a files, so I'll only be using it when one or two tracks are posted. Itunes can't read FLAC (Apple prefers its proprietary format Apple Lossless), but Songbird or VLC can. Of course, not many people use those two programs to listen to music (I certainly don't). Once again, Max can convert files between 20 different formats, so I would advise using it for converting to your favourite file format.

When several songs (a whole CD-single, for example) are posted, the tracks will be in AAC format (m4a) encoded at 256 kbps. This is the format used for files from the iTunes Store, and sound quality is comparable to (if not better than) a 320 kbps mp3 file but with a smaller file size. It's not quite audiophile, but it's getting there. For most people and systems, the sound quality will be indistinguishable from a CD.

mp3 will only be used in extreme cases, for example when posting re-edits of tracks I've dowloaded in that format from other blogs. I don't have anything against mp3 apart from the fact that it is now old and heavy compared to AAC (although some people say that the sound quality in AAC is less harsh compared to mp3). It's classicly the format used for best cross-platform compatability : not all portable audio devices can read AAC files, but more and more of them can. AAC is definitely a better format in my opinion.

I also make an effort with ID tags. These are used to store the artist and track name data. Some blogs don't add this, and although the file name contains some information, playing the track on your iPod will show "track 2 - artist unknown" or something similar. Not very helpful. I always fill in this info, and add the sleeve scan if possible.

Finally, for hosting I use mediafire. The service can be a bit kranky sometimes, but for a free service it's not half bad. I hate those sites like zshare that open two other windows with ads in them, make you wait 45 seconds, make you enter a captcha, etc. Sometimes the file names will be changed slightly to stop the tracks being found and deleted by 'rights owners' but frankly this has never happened to me: the stuff I'm posting is old, very specialised and no longer available. Also, posts will always mention where to buy a track if residual copies are still knocking around on amazon or ebay. Other sources for rare tracks are discogs, cdandlp and - occasionally - eil.

There you have it. Enjoy hope you enjoy the quality of the music and the the quality of the music, if you get what I mean...

mardi 14 avril 2009

I have to say, it took me a while to like these mixes by Masters At Work for Norwegian pop band Bel Canto, and I very much overlooked them for a while. Like, for ten years!

However time is great at helping your appreciate certain things, and I have finally come round to thinking that these mixes are actually rather fine: the MAW vocal version is pretty cool (although the vibrato in the voice makes it very clear that everything has been radically speeded up), the 'Tribe In Dub' mix is much more than just bonus beats, and even the downtempo mix (together with its instrumental version here) isn't that bad. Well worth rediscovering.

dimanche 12 avril 2009

A Mark Picchiotti project. Listening to the various remixes he was doing for people back in the early 90s I now have mixed feelings (sometimes relentless pumping is a little too much), although I loved them a lot back then, especially the disco influences.

This track came out via uber-cool label Tribal UK, much mourned when it folded, as all good labels seem doomed to. The track also came out through the US arm, albeit with a heinous sleeve designed by visually-impaired graphic artists (right), with Suzanne Palmer's giant head and flowery blouse on a rank green background. Ugh!

Luckily, the music was amazing; the fairly epic gospel house number was given some inspired remixes from Picchiotti himself. The results were pretty stunning then and well worth revisiting now.

When I say 'revisiting' I mean 'listening to again' because Mr. Pichiotti decided to re-release and remix the track again during the summer of 2007 on his Blueplate label. I find those seven new mixes, including a couple by ATFC completely awful.

samedi 11 avril 2009

First heard this on the wonderful Nineties Club CD Maxi Singles blog in late 2008 and immediately thought it was brilliant. With two of my favourite singers from ID Productions (Chantay Savage and Donnel Rush) and some excellent mixes from Steve 'Silk' Hurely and E-Smoove, I actually sang it practically non-stop for a week.

I'd seen on Discogs that there had been even more mixes available at the time, but eventually forgot about it. And yet, it kept popping back up on my iPod, and eventually I went back to the original post, saw that the CD-single was originally from Germany and had a look on amazon.de. There it was, still available, with more mixes, for just under 2€! Definitely a bargain. I bought it immediately.

When it arrived I listened to the extra mixes by Jamie Principle. First I though they were strange, then given a little time to let them sink in I thought they were actually quite brilliant. I was inspired to do some mucking about with my new find...

First, I mixed the Hurley and E-Smoove mixes together, trimming both of them down a bit; the Hurley mix is a little too long in my opinion, repeats itself a bit, and the E-Smoove mix had a few bars of nasty keyboards that I eliminated. The two mixes are very different and hide the fact that you are basically listening to the same song twice.

Then I also took the two Jamie Principle mixes, one of which was basically a bonus beats, and stuck them together to make a decent-length extended version. It is filthy, in a good way. I imagine this is what people danced to in opium dens in 1992.